No one in her family did what Emmy Lou dared to do. The general consensus was that Emily Lou was a tad crazy and a bit stuck on herself. Why else would anyone need to tell a perfect stranger all of one’s troubles? And pay that perfect stranger, no less. You just had to be crazy to do that kind of thing. Initially all that navel-gazing seemed so self-indulgent to Emmy Lou, but then she warmed to the idea like grits and gravy. One minute she was angry at her therapist, probing bastard, and the next minute she was flopped back on the couch inspecting the lint in that navel with the best of them. This is not to say she enjoyed her therapy. It sucked. The first sign it was working was the quiver in her lip, followed by the ache in her throat, by-product of the ache in her heart. Shortly, thereafter, the gate got left open and Emmy Lou was sniffling in a puddle of fresh tears.
The relief was far greater than the shame she felt. She dragged herself to his office twice a week for her sobfest and each week told herself this visit would be her last. And each week she returned, asking herself how she got to be so downtrodden. What exactly was it that she’d experienced that made her life seem so insurmountable. Her Momma’s words echoed in the nooks and crannies of her mind: be grateful you’ve got all your limbs, missy. The idea that she was nothing more than an ingrate who didn’t truly know the meaning of suffering stalked her incessantly. After all, what exactly did Emmy Lou have to complain about. She had a roof over her head, cash flow and a beautiful little boy. There were plenty of folk who had less, far, far less. So, she didn’t know her Daddy. Big deal. Better that than a victim of incest or war crimes. Get over it, she told herself not once, but many, many times.
And in this sense, she was getting over it. Fortifying herself with a little 420 and a little wine-spodey-odie, Emmy Lou was making the best of the crap hand she’d been dealt. That her crap was less deep than the crap of others was irrelevant she supposed on the days when she felt she could treat herself fairly, wisely and with compassion, so off she schlepped to the office of her therapist. Help me, help, help me, please. Her body announced her pain with its hangovers, leg cramps and muscle spasms, throbbing headaches, and low back ache. Emmy Lou was thirty-three, the same age as Jesus when they nailed hijm to the cross, not that that meant anything in the world that was Emmy6 Lou’s. But, she thought she should be more, for fuck’s sake, so much fucking more than what she was and it was this nagging dissatisfaction that ruined her. She should be doing cartwheels or some such nonsense as that and people should be sitting up and taking notice. She shouldn’t be sitting up nights because the little voices in her head wouldn’t let her sleep, kept telling her what a fine piece of work she was and how she’d never amount to nothing ‘cause nothing begat nothing and anybody’s daddy left them without ever even seeing the red wrinkled apple baby face of them. No, sir, life wasn’t meant to be lived this way, yet somehow this way was exactly the way Emmy Lou was living this life.
The rain came down like movie rain, the sheets and sheets of rain, the singing in the rain kind of rain, that glistened hard and unforgiving like diamonds, blood stones, forever, un relenting. Emmy Lou was soaked. Her coat and hat gave off the dung-like odor of wool. The mystery unraveled behind her and she stuffed its messy contents into a plastic bag, trying to keep it all in check.
At some point she knew she had to turn a corner or suffocate. She had known people who had suffocated, the little plastic bags that consist of the drudge and misery of life tightening over their faces until they turned blue and were gone, vanished. For all intents and purposes, dead. Getting the job at cousin Mabel’s insurance agency would be her plastic bag. The more her Momma pushed, the more Emmy Lou dug in to her position as sometime student and welfare mother. Which was the greater shame, dying an infinitesimally slow death by intellectual asphyxiation or living off the man? Well, she thought she knew the answer to that one.
***
She held her head in her hands, trying to keep it from splitting wide open and spilling what was left of her common sense out onto the ground where she would be forced to examine the slight nature of its contents. Jesus, what had she been thinking? Precisely that, she hadn’t been thinking. If she’d been thinking, using right-brain, hell even left-brain, activity, she wouldn’t be here, right now, trying to outsource an excuse for why she hadn’t gone straight home to her Momma’s, picked up her laundry and her son, and gone right about the business of saintly single motherhood. Instead, she’d walked right into the first open bar, which happened to be Miss Beulah’s, and ordered herself a beer and a pork chop sandwich. That innocent beer and pork chop laid the ground work for her current indelicate situation. Emmy Lou had just got herself laid, and that part was the good part. The problem was she’d been too busy bumping bellies to call her Momma to say she’d be late picking up Boo. Her Momma did not like schedule changes.
Mr. I Just Busted a Nut lolled on the bed, oblivious to her pain, real or imagined. Emmy Lou sighed. She was done with him, but it would be nice every now and again if these cretins she kept treating to her pootie would at least have half a brain. Poor choices. Wrong choices. She knew better, but her resistance was at an all time low. No boyfriend, no lover, for months and months and months. The last man who had come anywhere close to understanding her heart had left her about a year ago. Truth be told, Marc hadn’t left her; he just left. His restless nature was one of the reasons Emmy Lou felt comfortable leaving the door open a crack. There was no best way to describe the way Emmy Lou felt. Sometimes she thought she was going to break in two, that if anyone touched her she might shatter, all the little pieces of her would scatter to the ground in a rainbow shower of tear-stained glass. And it wasn’t that she held a monopoly on suffering. Emmy Lou was no fool; she had eyes to see the suffering that occurred randomly and carelessly all over the world at the hands of those with ambition and power and money. Hell, she could read the newspapers and what she saw there did not give her pause to hope, nor still her rampant fears. Emmy Lou didn’t really believe that everything would be all right. From what she could see, nothing, but nothing, could be further from the truth. And for this reason, but not solely this reason, Emmy Lou did what she did. She stalled and procrastinated and failed before anyone else could fail her. She barricaded her fortress with near impenetrable walls. There was no one but Boo to whom she was fully open. He was the bright star racing across the blackened galaxy of her chest, the streak of fire filling her belly with heat and tenderness and gratitude. She recognized in him her salvation, her opportunity to right the wrongs that were done against her in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, in the name of nothing better than benign neglect or sheer ignorance or plain not caring. Here was Emmy Lou’s chance to be good, to do good, to make good. If only she had the will to follow through. Her heart was in the right place, even if her pootie kept leading her off into the wilds.
Outside this boy’s house, she could hear the snuffling, whining and occasional yelp of dogs as dusk blanketed the spindly pine groves and dormant cornfields, where the lone stalk or two lolled and staggered like a drunkard in the quickening night wind. Emmy Lou smelled the char of home fires being first lit against the coming chill. Although the fall leaves had barely begun to burnish like golden and molten flames, she could feel the first snow sleeping, waiting its turn to clothe the countryside in soft and downy drifts. The promise of snow crouched in her joints, a thrilling cold that took away a little, some, but not all of the perpetual cold enveloping her heart, her throat, the very curve of her spine, the slope of her neck and shoulders. Here lay the snow waiting, just as she waited, for that one true moment when nature would take its course. When promise would become reality. Emmy Lou waited methodically, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, for nature to take its course and for herself to reveal herself to herself. That this was hard work and necessary work were obvious to Emmy Lou. What it would take from her, and ultimately give to her, were not as clear.
She pushed a long thin leg into the softly, faded denim of her jeans, then the other. She zipped, then snapped, not bothering to tuck in her tee-shirt. She fluffed at her hair with both hands, then scanned the room to see if she had everything that belonged to her. The boy slept. His quiet snoring was child-like and endearing, but Emmy Lou wasn’t partial to sentimentality. Her truth lay beyond the walls of this room. This moment had passed a pleasant diversion en route to something else. She wasn’t a moralist. Let the bible-thumpers save themselves and they had plenty of work cut out for them. She wasn’t a fatalist. She was a realist. What might pass between her and this boy on another day would be little more than a passing nod, a smile of agreeable recognition, a happy little wave.
Emmy Lou picked up her jean jacket and pulled it on, then wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and grabbed up her purse. She left without looking back. As she crossed the yard to her beat-up pick-up, the dogs yowled and bayed, only their chains snapping and clinking for the effort. The cool night air felt fresh and clean on against her flushed face. Emmy Lou grinned like a fool. There was nothing like balls out sex to clear the head of any nattering cobwebs. Her Momma could be pacified. If Emmy Lou merely hunkered down and let the shrapnel skitter and the bombs fall where they may, she would be okay. There was nothing her Momma could say now that hadn’t been said before. Most of it was water under the bridge, dredged up to satisfy her Momma’s disappointments, whether they be large or petty. Her Momma’s blow ups could be weathered if you wore the right protective gear. In fact, her Momma’s temper could often be stoked to Emmy Lou’s advantage, information that was handy to have at hand. Many were the occasions where she had turned her Momma’s ill-will into beneficence. She considered her tactical maneuvers as she inserted the truck key into the ignition and gave it a slow turn. There was no excuse for not calling, unless, of course, Emmy Lou had been unable to get to a phone. It wasn’t likely her Momma would buy the story that there had been no phone. But there was the off chance that she might run with the story that Emmy Lou’s truck had had a flat. That truck was a junker, both a mechanic’s dream and nightmare. It was impossible to say exactly how many times that truck had broken down, real or imagined. Emmy Lou didn't really care as long as the story worked for her Momma.
